


how do you let go of the past?

by flamebirds



Series: one shots [8]
Category: Batwoman (Comic), Teen Titans (Comics)
Genre: Titans West - Freeform, like i'm not tagging them all they don't all appear, really just going ham on the missing memories concept
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-24 18:35:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20912210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flamebirds/pseuds/flamebirds
Summary: you don't.





	how do you let go of the past?

It starts after Kate has hung up on her, leaving her crumpled on her bed and with an unanswered question swirling around her mind.

_How do you let go of the past?_

Kate hadn't given her a proper answer and if Bette has ever needed something from her older cousin, it's now, a scrunched up photograph in the palm of her hand. It's been buried at the bottom of her suitcase, evidently for a long time, and she doesn't know why she has it or how it exists.

She recognizes herself, eyes much brighter than she's ever seen them shining back at her, blonde hair shining in the sunlight, leaning into the man next to her. Bette doesn't recognize him, but in the picture, she seems so relaxed around him.

Him and all the others; a green boy she's fairly certain runs with the Titans (and is, like, _years_ younger than her), the Joker's Daughter, two guys next to a ginger woman, and what she thinks is the singer Mal Duncan and his wife.

To be frank, it's fucking weird. Bette doesn't remember ever interacting with any of the people shown here, she knows she wouldn't have gone around _unmasked_ in front of _Duela freakin' Dent_ and_ yet..._ she's checked the photo.

It's real.

It's real and it's making her feel _something,_ a deep pang in her heart that she thinks might be longing. All of them stare back at her, smiling and lifeless and out of place in the world they live, and Bette's certain that this day on the beach is a day she's lived, even if she doesn't remember it. She wants to, though. She wants to know what these people are like. Did they like her? Could it possibly be that, for the first time, she was wanted?

And if she was, then _why the hell would she ever let that go?_

It can't have been her choice, she reasons. It wouldn't have been then and it isn't now.

She makes the decision before she can truly think about it, before she can pick up the phone and ask one of her cousins, her experienced, practical cousins, for any sort of advice.

_How do you let go of the past?_

It's obvious now, so very obvious, and Bette smoothens the edges of the photograph, the faces staring back at her so familiar and so unknown at the same time and she wonders how there ever could have been a different answer.

_You don't._


End file.
